Says a co-worker I just this moment teased: “I hope a bear comes into your tent!”

Me: (In my best Latrina from Bromwell High voice) “So do I, lady! So do I!”

Have a great weekend!

Things I learned at this summer’s last long weekend:

1. Spiders are huge at the end of summer. Especially when there were tons of mosquitoes
2. Moo Moos (mu mus?) are very comfortable. I can see why fat people wear them
3. It’s bitter to see someone discover a place he loves and have to give it up
4. It’s laughable to see arrogance in a gay trailer park
5. Mr X plays some good tunes
6. Garage sales are much better in rural settings

I would like to take a moment to say to Scott and Mike (lovingly called A and B behind their backs) and “Puddin'” that it was a pleasure meeting you all and I hope that you don’t have to leave. You brought fun to the place.

Pics are huppa here!

We’re camping this weekend and I guess this is the last entry until Tuesday.

Thanks for playing!

Here’s a pic I took this morning through some mirrored glass of a ground floor office.

I can seee you!
I am trying to
work please
go away!

How could I not take that picture?

C U Next Tuesday!

Cartoon Brew tells me that Rock and Rule (aka DRATS, to you Canadians) will be out on DVD next week.

I remember one of my teachers at Sheridan College going all glassy-eyed when discussing the making of this movie. He told us how for the final scene where the demon rises up, the animators tried to film/rotoscope real blood spilling out over a sheet of glass with a camera underneath. Heady NFB-esque experimental stuff. Which didn’t work so well because they were really really high. Seems part of the money for art supplies was being funneled to midday cannibis breaks while Clive Smith would change things on the fly, making the final storyboard a piecemeal of bar napkin scribbles and effectively sending the writers to early graves. With this kind of kinetic filmmaking going on, it’s a wonder the movie is as coherent as it is.

Overheard at a rush screening:
“Jesus, guys… this makes no sense…”
“What doesn’t?”
“What?”
“What doesn’t make sense?”
“I see trails.”

My teacher (no I won’t name him) also talked about how cool it was to have Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Deborah Harry (at that time still hanging around Toronto from Videodrome shoots?) in and out of the studio, trying hard to jumpstart their careers by recording songs for the movie. I still hum “My name is Mok. Thanks a lot.” every so often.

Pay attention to the lips of the lead character, Mok. Yes, they’re Mick’s. You’d have to be living under a box not to realize that, but they’re really the star of the movie. Never has a facial part been so lovingly animated. Disney always went after the eyes. The animators of Rock and Rule were so high, they never got off the lips.

People. Please. Why do you want to see what she looks like? So you can recognize her if she moves into your neighbourhood?

If we’re lucky, she’ll be “Lady Di’ed” when she leaves the court house.

I think I’m more upset with Canadian media falling over themselves to mention her, mirroring US journalism sales tactics.

This will end in tears. Mark my words.

What an odd Saturday I’ve had. I attended my step-father’s wake in Brockvegas, populated with people whose average age was 70+, mostly rich white folks living in 750K codos overlooking the St Lawrence Seaway (Step-dad was a busy realtor in Brockvegas). Pepper in the odd via-marriage cousin, “son of so and so”, “brother of his uncle” and you had a room full of Italian/Irish/Brits all being nice and simmering emotionally over a free bar.

As I am generally a nervous wreck these kinds of social situations (and I don’t drink), I put my foot into my mouth so many times that Dr Scholls is considering teaming up with Crest to market directly to me. I had one particular gaffe that was done with such elan and flair I am certain I deserve a prize of some sort: We were clearing the party room after the service and I had just brought in the guest book and various framed photos into Mum’s condo. I look around and wonder where “the urn” is. Earlier, there was some debate as to wether Ian’s ashes were to be divided or placed into the St Lawrence. I turn to Mum and ask deadpan: “Where is Ian?”

Of course I mean Ian’s remains. Or Ian’s ashes. I didnt want to reduce him to that… level… so I stopped short of adding those two words to the end of my sentence. Plus I firmly believe that we never actually “leave” and that through memory and voodoo hocus pocus, we remain with our loved ones forever.

Anyhoo, back to the moment.

Mum’s face looks like I had just slapped her. My oldest brother, standing behind her, eyes the size of Grandma Perini’s largest stock pot lids, has a face that looks like I just uttered the most heinous swear word. Mum bursts into tears. She had been holding up well all day and only had a few blubbery moments during her comments at the service. Now, she’s full on crying. I hug her and try to explain myself. Over Mum’s head, I can see daggers shooting towards me from my brother’s eyes. After a time, she pulls back composed, cups my face in the way I love so much and says “Thank you.” It was the release she needed for the day and as if no error in my choice of words had happened, she explains to me that he’s in the same box, given to her from the funeral home, not an urn, over there on the piano.

I am of course, mortified.

The debate over what is to be done with the ashes still continues. I don’t want to ask and will wait ’til someone tells me.

That’s fantastic! Now do HIV!

Can you hear that? It’s the grumblings of conspiracy theories brewing in the back of my head regarding the large pharmaceutical companies keeping the cure (or cheaper, less toxic treatments) for HIV/AIDS under wraps. Ebola was discovered a couple years after HIV and was considered a greater threat due to it’s ease of transmission speed of kill. Twelve years later there’s a major breakthrough. Meanwhile the “Until There’s a Cure” bracelet gets tighter around my wrist and all we can do is slow HIV. I know Ebola is not a mutagen like HIV. Indulge me: After reading this story I fantasized that HIVers banding together and fighting the drug companies by staging massive “purchase strikes”, refusing their high priced drugs and staging North American-wide die-ins while squatting in shanty towns on the well manicured lawns of Dupont, GlaxoWelcom, etc. Much like the rising of drag queens during Stonewall, these people would bravely die to advance the “research” of HIV treatment faster than the occasional “pill condensement” the pharms seem to be rolling out these days.

Then I woke up. Ffft! That will happen.

I beat my puffed out chest and show you my stats from last month! Unga!

Total Hits 	1086582
Total Files 	178201
Total Pages 	96134
Total Visits 	18319
Total KBytes 	3341512

Ignore the “Hits” because there are still residual numbers from the Bagle_av virus associated with my site. Not bad, I think, for a blog that has no real direction or comment on political views.

I think you like me. Really like me.
I PAT ME ON THE BACK, MOFOS!

So what do you want to talk about now?

I’m standing on the subway escalator going up when I’m passed by a 16 yr old school girl: 5’4″, 120, shoulder-blade length blonde hair, white dress shirt playfully not tucked into her ultra-mini plaid skirt.

Ultra mini being an understatement.

When she gets 5 steps ahead of me on the escalator, *woofp* a wind comes along and flips up her skirt.

I see thong. Buried deep within very visible girl parts and ass cheeks.

Not once, but three times her skirt flipped up. Yes. It is a red-pink thong. Yes. She shaves.

I look back to see if anyone else on the escalator can see this. A woman about ten steps behind is not paying attention.

I know now that I am truly gay because it did nothing for me other than make me laugh.

I suspected something was going to happen when I saw Sharkboy swerve his bike, small and sharp, at the bottom of my steep driveway. Thankfully he didn’t try to cut to the right or left and just let himself follow through into the slide. His mistake was hitting the front brake in the sandy gravel of the construction site across from the driveway.

He was going at a fast clip when his bike slid out from under him and veered left while his body mass continued, uninterrupted, straight on towards the big pile of sand. Heavily, his body landed on his keys and money in his pocket, making an indentation on his right leg. At this point he was fully free from his bike, chest down on the dirt and pavement, like some errant mother thinking she could regain her youth by bellyflopping down a Slip N Slide. He starts barking out short Ow’s even before he fully stops.

“Are you ok?” I ask as I dismount my bike. Why am I such a stupid dummyhead? The blood is mixing with the dust on his arm and he hasn’t stopped saying Ow. OF COURSE HE’S NOT.

There’s a certain degree of frustrated despair when you watch someone you love have an accident and you are powerless to react. Its like being reminded that the one you love is not eternal, mortal, human. Once I watched my Da slip at McDonalds and land right on his ass.

Sharkboy was more embarassed than anything else. So I held off on the “Neeeyaaahahahahah!!!” until later while we were cleaning his wounds.